1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a radio access network system which can analyze a location of fault and a cause of fault when fault occurs in the network.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, many mobile terminals such as cellular phones are used increasingly. In a radio access network system for mobile terminals, a communication fault occurs for various reasons of network circuits. Therefore, quick analysis of the fault and quick restoration from the fault are desired. A user asks a network operator a cause of fault generated, if a certain fault occurs. The network operator needs a method and system for analyzing efficiently a factor of generated fault and a location of generated fault in order to cope with inquiries from users about such faults quickly.
In the conventional radio access network, an analyzing method, which monitors a mobile terminal to which the communication is terminated or a signal which flows on a control equipment, and outputs collected information to a file, and then finds out a fault location by analyzing the file using analysis tools, is generally used.
On the other hand, in the radio access network, a lot of relay equipments for relaying a signal which flows between endpoints of the network exist. Therefore, a fault generated within these relay equipment cannot be found out easily from such a collected information. For this reason, in the conventional analyzing method of fault, it combines information collected within each relay equipment and information collected with a mobile terminal or with a control equipment based on time information when the signal monitor was carried out, and then, a location of fault and cause of fault are analyzed from these combined information. However, this conventional analyzing method takes a great man power.
In Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2001-519619, a test method, in which a command for acquiring data is transmitted to respective management agents connected to each of nodes in the network, data acquired by respective management agents according to the command is collected by any one management agent and analyzed as a whole, is disclosed. However, this test method aims at examinations before network service in, an examination of a network quality assessment, etc., and it is not disclosed about analysis of faults of live communication after service in.